The idea of young men joining together for their mutual improvement spiritually, mentally and socially was born in London, England in 1844 under the leadership if a twenty-one year old clerk in a draper’s establishment by the name of George Williams. By 1851, the concept had reached the U.S. where the first YMCA was organized in Boston. Fifteen years later, the idea caught on in Canton, then a budding industrial town with a population of 5,500, ten churches, thirty-five factories and fifty saloons. Just one year after Lee surrendered to Grant to end the civil war, the first local YMCA meeting was held in the lecture room of the Methodist Church on April 16, 1866.
Among the early leaders of the YMCA in Stark County was a young Major William McKinley, who in 1868 was elected the third President of the YMCA Board of Directors. He is the only person to have served as both a President of a YMCA and the United States. Although the YMCA flourished for its first ten years, it later began to encounter some difficulties due in part to the lack of a paid staff person. So fifteen years after its promising beginning, the first YMCA in Stark County disbanded, and from 1880 to 1886 there was no organized YMCA in the county.
The YMCA was re-organized and chartered on August 25, 1886 and has rendered continuous service in Canton and Stark County to the present day. Just four years after the YMCA was reorganized, the first YMCA building was opened in Canton on December 19, 1890 at the corner of West Tuscarawas and Plum Street (McKinley Avenue). It was in this building that Stark County saw its first swimming pool. The first basketball game in the county was played here just seven months after the game had been invented by YMCA Director James Naismith in 1894.
In 1979, a new name was instituted: The YMCA – Canton Area. In its early history, the YMCA helped establish two other organizations that are now independent community agencies – the Canton Public Library and the Boy Scouts of America. The YMCA moved its operations in January 1916 to Second Street and McKinley Avenue where it operated until August 2008. Programming in the City of Canton continues, utilizing area schools, churches and the Edward “Peel” Coleman Center (Southeast Community Center).
Sign up for the YMCA newsletter
Sign up for our newsletter for instant updates on the YMCA of Central Stark County!